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Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Dendrobium spectabile: Limited Palette and Magic Eraser Sponge

LIMITED PALETTE

Learning
from my failures when painting Phalaenopsis cornu-cervi and how
important to effectively pick and mix paints, I decided to do my
Dendrobium spectabile with as few pigments as possible. I used only 3+1
paints, W&N Perylene Maroon (PM), Indanthrene Blue (IB), and Daniel Smith Hansa
Yellow Light (HYL) and, for some area, Permanent Rose.

I
am pleased that these four are all single-pigment paints and two of
them (PM and IB) have a great range of colour-mix, from which I could
get all colours I
need to paint the orchid. They covered the "white" lip/labellum,
greenish yellow
sepals and petals, to the very dark burgundy pattern on the lip.Beside having significant amount of
clarity of colours when finished, I found painting with fewest possible
pigments eased my mind. I worked with wet in wet washes a lot, which
allowed me to let the paint flow and mingle with each other. These
limited palette really helped me avoid muddy colours, which could easily
result from inadvertent
clashes of pigments. In addition, the limited pallete brought about
harmony to the
whole painting.

MAGIC ERASER SPONGE

Magic
eraser sponge can completely remove unwanted marks from the paper but I
avoided using it due to its abrasive nature. However, I made a mistake,
which couldn't be erased using eradicator brush. Hence, I used my
eraser
sponge this time, but with care.

My tips of using magic eraser sponge:1. Make sure the colouring is final. Once rubbed with the sponge, the paper surface impacted is somewhat damage and difficult to paint.2. Use masking tape to protect the other area for precise result. Make sure all paint and paper is completely dried.3. I cut the sponge into a small square because I prefer to use pointy corners to rub tiny areas. 4. Dampen the sponge and rub it gently until the unwanted mark completely removed. Wash and rinse the sponge regularly.5. Remove the masking tape when the paper completely is dried6. If you need to tidy the edge, apply only dry brush, as dry as possible.

DENDROBIUM SPECTABILE

The
orchids are native to Papua island (Indonesia and PNG). The blossoms
have an alien look, but I fell in love with it since our first
encounter at a local orchids nursery in Yogyakarta back in 2013. Their extremely
twisted sepals, petals and curling lip made them look as if they danced and
their intricate patterns were the very first reason I had a crush on them.

By mid of this month, I visited the same nursery and I was happy to find it bloomed, reminded me of my long desire to paint it. So here is my latest painting, Dendrobium spectabile, The Dancer!

10 comments:

Your orchid painting is so beautiful that I feel happy just looking at it. It does look like an Indonesian dancer--very exotic and graceful! I am glad to know that someone else likes to use a limited palette. Most of my paintings are done with only 3 or 4 pigments, and the ones you mentioned are among my favorites.

I really liked this part of the article, with a nice and interesting topics have helped a lot of people who do not challenge things people should know... you need more publicize this so many people who know about it are rare for people to know this... Success for you.....!!!

This piece is stunning. I just found you searching for an eradicator brush...do you have a brush you recommend? I was watching a B. Shovel tutorial and used her name in the search and your blog came up in the search.